About The Industry

English has been the effective lingua franca since the ascendance of the British Empire in the 19th century. It is still used as a common global language to this day, and proficiency is especially prized in countries competing to export to the massive combined economy of the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and Ireland. This has created a global industry worth billions of dollars; in rich manufacturing centers such as South Korea, there are even celebrity ESL tutors making seven figures! Students from all over the world learn English from native English teachers—often traveling to dedicated schools overseas—forming a robust community with its own Meetups and conferences.

Our team includes highly qualified ESL professionals with years of experience in the industry, and we are partnered with established ESL organizations. This includes one of the largest related Meetups and Facebook pages in the world, whose growing online community created the need for our upcoming blockchain-powered ESL app.

The industry is worth $80 billion!

Blockchain Technology

Bitcoin has revolutionized the world of finance, making it possible to send money to and from anywhere in the world cheaper and faster than ever before. This is especially beneficial to ESL students and teachers, who often face technical or regulatory barriers when trying to move needed funds between home and abroad.

All of it is thanks to blockchain technology, which works in an automated and decentralized fashion—that is, not controlled by anyone. Instead of a central database, transactions are verified and stored by equal members of a peer-to-peer network which anybody can join. Anybody who deviates from the communally-accepted transaction history is effectively ejected.

Far more than just keeping track of account balances, however, the blockchain can store all kinds of critical (disputable) information. This includes the terms of a contract such as an automatically-executed will (smart contracts), the owner of real estate or intellectual property (smart property), and a variety of facts, figures and other data about which people might disagree for profit or ideology.

ESL Coin and Its Structure

ESL Coin is the full application of blockchain technology to the ESL industry. In addition to providing a common means of payment, it will function as a decentralized autonomous database of ESL students, teachers and businesses. Smart contract technology will be used to assign reputations to users based on feedback from others, who will be initially verified by a blockchain-based ID system.

Anyone will be able to use this network to find ESL services or clients without paying hefty middlemen fees. Instead, what little fees exist will be redistributed as micropayments to native English speakers who help students practice, as well as to miners and other third parties. These will include Mooti.id and DECENT, responsible for registering users and educational content, respecitively.

The ESL Coin Network will be accessible via the BitLingual company's DApp, TryEnglish, as well as other third parties. We and our partners are also exploring other applications of blockchain technology to the ESL industry, including translations,
accent reduction, content registration and distribution and academic record transmission.

No new ESL Coins will ever be generated, creating a stable ecosystem. The Network will be governed by a Co-operative—a decentralized legal entity which all significant ESL holders may become a member of—ensuring no one person can maintain ownership or control.

Proctors test students, transmitting the test scores to them via the ESL Network or more traditional encrypted channels.

Raw scores may be uploaded to the blockchain—making them accessible to all—for students not concerned about academic privacy.

Encrypted scores are submitted by proctors to the blockchain. Uploads are done in bulk, thus paying less fees to the miners.

Decryption keys are transmitted to to the schools to which students have applied.

Scores are decrypted from the blockchain. Reading from it has no cost, so transmission is always free.

Students attend the accepting school of their choice, sending ESL Coin and receiving their grades.

Other academic records such as grades may be transmitted as by proctors for ESL students transferring to other schools and universities.

All fees are in ESL Coin, some of which is converted to ether to pay miners for securing academic records.

Publishers of educational content for ESL students upload it to the DECENT network.

DECENT distributes the content to consumers, collecting fees in the process to pay miners and seeders.

Ethereum data on the reputations of publishers is paired with DECENT’s if they engage in other activities on the ESL Coin network.

Consumers of content that is for sale pay publishers in ESL Coin for the right to access it.

ESL coins on the DECENT blockchain are pegged 1-to-1 with ERC20 tokens on Ethereum and converted when needed.

Some of the fees collected in ESL Coin are sent to native English speakers to incentivize participation in the community.

ESL coins are converted to DCT and ETH when needed to pay DECENT and Ethereum network fees.

TryEnglish app

ESL Coin’s first decentralized app has its origins in the Conversational English Meetup group, which is one of the largest in the world with over 21,000 followers on Facebook (all organic). It also spawned related chat rooms on Skype, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk where ESL students practice English with one another and search for or share resources.

Over the years, however, our group outgrew existing chat platforms, many of which have serious moderation issues and none of which are dedicated specifically to ESL students. The TryEnglish app will better facilitate English practice conversation with a variety of additional features, using the ESL Coin network to help connect them with schools, homestays and other services they may need.

Join the Network

At least 20% of all ESL Coin created will be given away to support the ESL community. Half of that will go to grants to community organizations such ESL Meetups, student clubs, and teacher organizations. These funds are expected to be used for the general welfare of their memberships and to reward those who do good work, with the only condition being that they join and earnestly participate in the ESL Coin Network.

The remaining 10% will be saved for third party app developers who wish to make their own partially or fully-decentralized applications on top of the ESL Coin Network. These will all have full access to the Network equivalent to TryEnglish, which is developed by a separate company from the ESL Coin Co-operative (a non-profit).

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ICO Breakdown

ESL Coins will be sold at a flat rate of 0.00001 BTC throughout its duration, and the bonus for the presale (still ongoing—message us to join) will be only 10%. Information about how to participate in the ICO is forthcoming.

To be announced soon!

PLANNED EXCHANGES

Team

Andrew Wagner

Bio

"Andrew Wagner is a long-time decentralization advocate from back when a bitcoin was worth just a couple dollars. He's a director of the Bitcoin Co-op, Community Manager at NewsBTC, and the founder of the decentralized CoinFest convention as well as blockchaingaming.com. He's also an adviser to many successful projects who has been published on multiple cryptocurrency outlets and gives frequent talks."

Aldona Dziedziejko

Academic English Specialist at BitLingual

Bio

"Aldona Dziedziedko received her Masters degree from UBC and is finishing her B.Ed. with minors in international education and curriculum development. She works as an ESL teacher in the greater Vancouver area, where she has been actively involved in the ESL community. She was also an early investor in Bitcoin who is excited about the application of technology to education."

David Genest

Chief Administrative Officer at BitLingual

Bio

"David Genest holds a business degree with finance specialization from the Sauder School of Business. His experience includes management and financial modeling, and he has worked in the energy sector as an analyst and manager for over 10 years. David also has a great deal of interest in blockchain technology and has come to learn about ESL coin via his involvement in DCTRL, a community commons in Vancouver."

Eddie Yuen

Operations and Marketing at BitLingual

Bio

"Eddie is a digital marketing professional who specializes in building funnels and traffic generation. He has always been fascinated by the power of technology and communities and has been involved with startups for the last few years. He mentors startups in traffic generation and E-commerce in his spare time and currently runs YVRstartups.com and the Vancouver Crypto Network Meetup, a fast-growing community of non-technical cryptocurrency users."

Brad Chun

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Brad is an angel investor and adviser to numerous start-ups who has been active in the blockchain and digital currency space since 2010. He is the founder and CIO of Shuttle Fund, a digital asset hedge fund, with previous experience at GE Capital, Reservoir Capital and Deutsche Bank. He is also owner of Mooti, whose platform handles personal digital identities on the blockchain, and co-founder of the Moeda cooperative banking platform."

Isaac Nandgavkar

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Isaac Nandgavkar is a technology enthusiast with 5 years freelance experience in graphics design. His academic interest lies in business development of technologies related to energy with a mind for global environmental sustainability. He has been involved in many crypto-related projects from early 2013, and is an administrator of www.blockchaingaming.com who will probably beat you at Beyond the Void."

Rhea Baliwala

Business English Specialist at BitLingual

Bio

"Rhea Baliwala holds an MBA degree with a finance specialization and has worked in investment banking & equity research for over 5 years. She runs her own Business English training company focused on professionals working in the financial sector. A firm believer in the power of P2P networks to reduce middlemen in the economy, she has a great deal of interest in blockchain technology and its obvious potential in the education space."

Kim Cassidy

Community Manager at BitLingual

Bio

"Kim Cassidy started out with a law clerk degree, then soon realized she wasn't a fan of "the system" and moved on to other jobs. She was an instructor at educational institutions around the northern parts of Ontario, including teaching English alongside a decorated ESL teacher. She became involved with various blockchain projects via her brother Jason Cassidy, a known figure in the Canadian blockchain community."

Ali Raheman

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Ali Raheman is one of the blockchain industry's young prodigies who started producing patents in AR and robotics when he was just 17. While still in medical school, he founded Autonio, the blockchain-based AI platform currently focused on automated trading with decentralized exchanges. It grew from an ICO fundraiser of around $54,000 to a multi-million market cap cryptocurrency."

Adam Rizvi

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Adam Rizvi is a technology enthusiast who has been working in IT for over 10 years. He is the founder of CryptoBatesGroup, a development and consultancy business managing a range of cryptocurrency projects including Bitcoin twitter bots, a custom-designed and built crypto faucet, and free crypto workshops. He is also the founder and lead organizer of CoinFest UK, the largest branch of CoinFest."

Shawn Chattin

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Shawn has spent over a decade instructing English in a variety of contexts to learners from all over the world, currently at Kaplan Harvard Square. By combining contemporary methodologies, digital tools and a degree in Applied Linguistics, he meets the needs of the modern ESL student. He views the blockchain as the next logical step in the education industry and is excited to help ESL Coin become one of its pioneers."

Eric Lim

Director at ESL Coin Co-operative

Bio

"Eric Lim is an expert in international education with more than 10 years of work experience at private and public institutions in Canada and South Korea, including Sprott Shaw College and Simon Fraser University. He acquired his business degree at the latter and went on to found MOCA Auto Body Estimator, and currently manages a marketing agency for ESL schools called Edupedia Consulting Inc."